That's How It Happened

My guess is goovite are going to get sued by the big GOOG.

Bid on a Devil Doll. Really hilarious auction description.

Suitcase Go-Kart.

Blumpkin (NSFW) is going mainstream (extremely NSFW).

Grizzly Man is my favourite film this year. It's a doc by Werner Herzog about Timothy Treadwell, who spent 13 summers living with grizzly bears in Alaska, before being eaten by grizzly bears. The best quote comes from Herzog's voiceover: "Here I differ from Treadwell; I believe the common character of the universe is not harmony, but hostility, chaos and murder."

Nike Contact Lenses, I give it about three minutes before these get bastardised with swooshes.

Google Earth Machinima.

The Frying Pan is the awesomest club in the universe. It's like Captain Nemo's sub at Disney, except that it really is rusting and listing, and you have to wonder if it's going to sink, taking the lives of hundreds of sweaty NY hipsters with it.

Great article about a commercial poker bot. My feeling is that if the bot was so effective, no-one would have sold it, they'd be busy running thousands of copies of it.

I saw the Mike Mills - Humans exhibition in Tokyo, and had no idea what it was about. Now he has a blog, and it still seems kinda obscure.

Nike Football Game, which is actually cool, compared to most viral games anyhow.

This is my first post from my new iBook. Through the magic of the ol' internut, I got it shipped to New York, and picked it up there, en route to Canada. I'm now ensconced in a little bistro in Montreal, enjoying a steak frites with a galopin of Stella. I feel totally dazzled after a hard weekend in NYC, perhaps not quite ready to rhapsodise w/r/t the virtues of this little laptop. It certainly is a sweet machine though. Pretty awesome both in form and function, but I'll post in detail about it when I've had a good look "under the hood". I'm in Montreal for the glamour that is the International Continence Society 2005 Meeting. I'm not presenting anything, so I get to concentrate on being wined and dined by big pharma, and maybe blogging a little too.

Sometimes I feel a little delerious when I see weird sh*t on the internets. I felt slightly strange last night watching this 10 minute Columbia / Challenger remix movie (with lovingly edited soundtrack, and groovy iMovie fades). However Black Nasty really takes the biscuit. I feel compelled, and yet utterly creeped out too. There's no genre to describe this, except maybe nonce rock. The whole album, "AIDS can't stop me", is composed of semi-rapped stories of sex crimes, with god awful slow rock musak. Every single line is obscene. It couldn't be more en ess eff double u. It's hard to find a non-offensive quotable line: "I'll never be curious, I'll never be felched, cos I'm not gay, the rumors are squelched, faggots..." Anyway I completely recommend that you check the website, with lots of equally horrible MP3s to download. There's even a sister act Pink Nasty to explore.

I think linkblogging is becoming redundant. digg is just too good at supplying fresh linkage. Still my paltry contribution:

Speedball 2 (my favourite ever Amiga game) faithfully emulated for Java phones, with (and this is the kicker) bluetooth battling.

What happens when you try to play a platinum disc? I have a Madonna platinum disc (Use Your Illusion? I forget) kicking around at home, I'm totally trying this.

Laser Catapult: "precisely split pencils at 20 feet, hit cans as far as 150 feet, and hit flying targets with a shotgun spray of BBs"

Menstruating Barbie: vaguely obscene, contains shocking scenes of doll violence.

The last days of X-Box factory footage.

Fun with 4kg of sodium, dangerous fun.

5% of all would-be astronauts have died in the attempt. Wikipedia guide to space disasters. My favourite is Theodore Freeman who was killed by a stray goose.

Over the last 24 hours I've been monkeying about with Google Desktop 2.0, and this morning I added Google Talk to it. If you haven't already downloaded it, it does a number of incredible things: Spotlight-like indexed desktop searching, IM, VOIP (free!), RSS newsreader, plus really good integration with Google News and GMail. At the bottom of my cool Google sidebar, I placed a little to-do plug-in. Unfortunately since I got Google Desktop, I've to-done nothing. Productivity = zero. It's an astonishing time waster; not just the necessity of "chatting online with hot babes all day", but the added madness of trying to stay on top of all my favourite blogs in real time. It's so cool, I think I might have to uninstall it.

I ate last night at the Hind's Head in Bray. It's Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck off-shoot, essentially a gastro-pub, with just a touch of the famed "molecular gastronomy" creeping into the menu. Between myself and the non-blonde we ate: soused herrings with beetroot and onion, a quail's egg salad, a steak with bearnaise, a hammed duck leg on peas, two portions of triple cooked chips, a quaking pudding, and treacle tart with milk ice cream. Really straight-forward perfectly cooked dishes. It reminds my of the St John, because of its unfussiness. The great thing is, because Heston has been so profligate in his cookery writing, you can reproduce almost all these dishes by scouring back issues of the Times and the Guardian: cured mackerel, triple cooked chips, steak, quaking pudding, hammed duck (sort of); in fact everything Heston has ever published is archived here. Despite this wealth of recipes, I'm still keenly anticipating the inevitable Fat Duck Cookbook.

Guerrilla Gillette Clinical Trial
A combination of the transexual shaving foam , and the Guardian feature on bad science in the cosmetics industry, prompted me to wonder why I spend so very much on Gillette razor blades. My current blade of choice costs an astonishing £7.98 for four blades at Boots. I'm absolutely unclear if the blades (M3 Nitro) are any better than previous Gillette offerings the Mach 3, and Mach 3 Turbo. I figured since Gillette clearly aren't doing any real science to demonstrate that their monstrously expensive blades are "worth it", perhaps I could do the science for them. I'm proposing a user-led single blind controlled clinical trial of Gillette's blades. If you'd like to be a subject in my trial, you'll get four free razor blades, a questionnaire asking if you can identify the different blades, and a rating questionnaire for each blade. You'll have to use the blades sequentially for 1 week each. As I'm not getting any funding from Gillette for this (obvs!) you'll have to supply your own razor handle. Although the tagline is "the best a man can get", I'm looking to recruit men and women, and would like a mix of Gillette naive users and experienced Gillette heads. Feel free to sign up, or make suggestions for my nascent research protocol via the comments.

Protopage, a custom internet startpage for the HTML illiterate.

Rad greasemonkey Gmail preview bubbles hack.

Best tag ever (Top two images)?

More home mecha madness. Probably a repost, but so cool.

Office Space, almost the entire movie in WAVs.

Incredible gas saving device. Ingenious! Now we no longer have to fear global warming.

A-HAAARGH!, what a way to discover that you've impregnated Courtney Love.

This Spartan Life is so unbelievably the most modern thing that has ever existed. It makes me want to go back on X-Box Live, just so I can crash their machinima talk show and kill them all. Brilliant.

Some other buzzworthy stuff: The Under 5s (a band), Christopher Walken (a presidential candidate), Thumbsucker (a Mike Mills movie, (check out Paperboys before this opens, so you can pretend you were already cool)), Giganticide (a religious/lexicographic magazine), The Warriors (a computer game, just 26 years after the movie opened.)

The Ministry of Reshelving, clearly Book Crossing's evil twin.

MMO-G3-Addiction beckons.

Unknown Link Contest (win an iPod!), contains such esoteric unknowns as: digg, dooce, maddox, homestar runner, flickr, orsinal, even the frickin subservient chicken. How can people be so very very stupid? They might as well have suggested slashdot, boingboing and fark.

Hummer H3 still sucks.

Loonngg list of graphing calculator games.

Best. Customised Simpsons Action Figure. Ever.

What's That Bug?, a blog that identifies insects for concerned readers, has a hot Bug Love section. On the same note: praying mantis eats humming bird.

Thom Yorke's blog, is somewhat, uh, experimental.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster and his concerns about ID, explained at Wikipedia.

Everyone enjoys a good virtual crime: Bot Gangs rule the streets of Lineage 2.

Fantastic break dancing subway trash video for Mint Royale, previously famous for the Gene Kelly x VW ad and The Sexiest Man in Jamaica song. (Thanks, Mighty Khoost*r)

How to: Watch Less TV. My suggestion would be to check US reviews of Lost, discover that you don't find out what the monster is, and that they don't get rescued, then lose interest in the most promising show on Channel 4.

Home mecha-bot madness. Who doesn't need a 12 foot robowarrior in their living room?

Spasmotica the coolest movie sneaker, since the Team Zizzou Adidas, or possibly even the Nike Space Jam.

I've managed to eat at three Michelin starred restaurants in the course of a week, (Maze, Noma, Northcote Manor). However my real culinary highlight is planned as a trip to Masa at the end of the month. The $350 set menu has been touted as the world's most expensive meal. Fortunately I'm just going to eat at the sushi bar. However today the Guardian point out that Umu is more expensive. £240 really strikes me as a lot, for one set menu. For that price I could get supper and a room at Hiiragiya Ryokan in Kyoto, and really live out my Kill Bill fantasies. I've never been to Umu, thanks to a deliciously harsh review in the Sunday Times, and I guess I won't ever be going now.

Utterly flawed yet compelling flash game: Space Worms. As (Not DJ) Waxy points out, level 8 appears to be unbeatable by humankind. D.A.R.Y.L. could probably do it though.

I've signed up for Run London (possibly that should be RUNLONDON), Nike's annual running jamboree. For £32 you get a "free" t-shirt, and your very own "digital" (read RFID) chip to track your times. All I need now is a running mate. Everyone approached so far has either claimed to "hate running", or feigned alcoholism. Any offers...

I got taken out for another excellent meal on Wednesday night. You can't fault the pharmaceutical industry for their willingness to bribe doctors. We went to Noma in Copenhagen. Like at Maze, the chef has previously worked at El Bulli. Noma is better though. It has won a Michelin star for really inventive food, using entirely seasonal ingredients from Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, and Denmark. The restaurant is in a refurbished warehouse, on the old "North Atlantic Wharf". It shares the building with the Icelandic Embassy. Yet again, I'm hazy about the menu. Seven courses, each with their own fancy organic wine will tend to do that to you. There was lots of incredibly delicate cod, and the best duck I've ever tasted that had apparently been "feasting on herbs from the beach". The real show off highlight was a tiny cauliflower jelly, served with a cauliflower syllabub, and a sprig of juniper that was set alight in the plate so we could inhale the vapours. Noma gets my highest recommendation.

The 3 Funniest Things Said At My Grandmother's Funeral
My grandmother's funeral was held today. Along with my brother, my uncle, and my three male maternal first cousins, we carried her coffin from her house to her church. The service was devastatingly sad, and I'll miss her forever. However the day was enlivened by some hilarious Lancashire wit and wisdom from the assorted mourners. In reverse order of wackiness:

"The brain is the largest muscle in the body, and probably the most intelligent."

"I'll not say goodbye to your father; I've never liked his books anyway."

"Your clearly not as bright as your brother, since your grandmother never had a nice thing to say about you." (Said to my brother, in my presence.)

My parents were married in the same church where the funeral was held. On that auspicious day back in 1973, one of the elderly uncles took my father aside to say:

"I married into this damn family 32 years ago, and I've regretted it every day since."

Is the whole north of England so brilliantly inappropriate, or is it just one small corner of Whalley?

I've been delaying this post, since it's the 666th post to this blog. But I guess it has to happen sometime. The other cause of delay is that I am in Copenhagen attending IUGA '05. It's a pretty fun conference. Lots of opportunity to watch the most famous names in urogynaecology be unspeakably rude to each other in public, the go out and get unspeakably drunk together in private. I've had terribly poor internet access thus far this week, so I haven't had my usual eagle-eye on the blogosphere. These links are probably vieux chapeau:

I'm thinking Juba The Movie would be awesome. I can't help but feel admiration for the plucky little murderer.

Nice automated slang/acronym translator.

Stuff On My Cat, (ess eff double-u) a cross between Kitten War and Drunk Jenga.

Free The Postcode seems an unduly complicated way of wresting postcodes back from Royal Mail. Wouldn't it have been easier to ask people to submit their street names, rather than their GPS data?

How to build a helmet mounted camera.

Pentrix/pentix the home of annoying pen twiddling.

Lovely links submitted by eagle eyed readers:

Japanese Weather reported in beer can format. (Thanks Paddy)

Hiccup Lovers, the webs premier hiccup fetish site. (Thanks Maria)

The Unabomber's hoody, shoes, books, etc all likely to be sold at MurderAuction.com.(Thanks Nick W)

And one link from me: Whose Fish? a competitive logic puzzle.

Tapas and Neo-Tapas
Thanks to the generosity of the pharmaceutical industry I've eaten on consecutive nights at Fino and Maze. Fino is often suggested as London's best spanish restaurant, serving traditional, yet delicate refined tapas. Maze is the newest Gordon Ramsay restaurant. The chef Jason Atherton trained at El Bulli, earth's second best restaurant. They serve a very distant relative of tapas, consisting of many many small courses of immaculate fusion dishes. I was determined not to like Maze, ever since an unpleasant encounter with an abrasive Gordon Ramsey when I used to be a waiter. The food is however really good. We got treated to a 12 course whirl through the menu. Every dish is a really clever unobtrusive fusion. There's nothing too showy-offy, nothing to shock the taste buds; but each dish is intelligent. I was disappointed that it isn't quite the same virtuoso buccal explosions as Keller/Feria/Blumenthal, but it all tastes great. I'm a little hazy about the 12 courses, but I distinctly remember finishing up with a tiny baked alaska on a stick. We also got to sit adjacent to the kitchen, and through panoramic windows got to watch the sous-chefs getting a Hell's Kitchen style bollocking. Last night I moved onto Fino. The strange thing is, though I could hardly fault Maze, Fino was better. Tucking into a plate of morcilla blood sausage and fried duck egg, I realised that it was more "real" than anything served at Maze. I know I'll be going back to Fino for sardines, pimentos de padron, and giant langoustines. Having experienced the performance that is Maze, no matter how polished, I doubt I'll ever feel like trying it again.

New Nike Air Woven Colorways
From Nike Talk:
Nike Air Woven AP
January 2006
(Possible Asia Only Releases)
BAROQUE BROWN/TEAL
BLACK/GOLDLEAF
BLACK/GOLDLEAF

This is like all my christmases come at once. In particular goldleaf is going to rule. My personal favourite colorway to date is the jp only metallic silver. Somehow I don't expect that these will be in Office or Size any time soon though.

Wanna be a hooker? Crochet gets sexed up at Made With Sweet Love.

If your hotel is underwater, you know you're going to want to take a $100 Remotely Operated Submarine on holiday.

The secrets of Burton and his 40 Nut Sorting Squirrels. As an aside I once spent 6 months trying to train 24 rats to press levers: this squirrel guy must have the patience of a lump of granite.

Apple's new Mighty Mouse apparently awesome. No word yet if the old Mighty Mouse will sue.

A classic non-medic error over at bOINGbOING. Mark Frauenfelder writes:

"Nineteen-year-old Tonga "Papio" Loumoli was diving at night in Hawaii when a four-foot-long crocodile needlefish sliced him from groin to breastbone."

Surprising that the needlefish made such a neat longitudinal incision, cleverly avoiding the tummy button eh? What really happened is that the fish pierced his abdominal wall in the right flank (under the little square gauze patch), and then clever Hawaiian surgeons made the tidy incision, trying to check that no bowel injury had occurred.

Things I am unduly excited about:

Olympic Drug Dive: 8-bit intoxicated glory! (Thanks Turlough!)

1st edition Nike Air Wovens on eBay. If this guy spoke Queen's English, and didn't list the shoes as being in HK, when he's in Canada, he'd win my bid.

Buying all three Mita Delta Forces.

hTM Footscape Wovens, previously spotted here and here. I almost believe these are going to make it from Hiroshi's feet to mine.

Making tiny origami shirts from dollar bills.

Okie Noodling (Note to self, must learn to wrangle giant catfish.)

CollabRank and StartPlane which have revolutionised my del.icio.using.

Becoming a genius through judicious application of java flashcards.

Talking of which: ironic web searches.

Musical Bacon
I'm probably the world's worst player of Musical Bacon, despite the fact that I invented it (just now). The game is to make the longest chain of songs that sample each other. For example:
Time for Livin' (Sly Stone)
which was sampled by
So Whatcha Want (Beastie Boys)
which was sampled by
E Pro (Beck)
That's the longest chain I can come up with right now, and I've been thinking about it for all of five minutes. Can anyone do better, or at least suggest some online resources to improve the game?

I am really under the cosh at work. I think I have to restrict my blogging to my own non-embezzled hours. V brief posting, until I get fired or win the lottery or something:

8-bit Googlemaps.

Top ten ways to destroy the earth.

RPG Grow. Remember Grow? This is like weirder and longer and more fun.

I really don't have time to get into it, but Urban Dead looks like the best "Massively Multi-Player Web-Based Zombie Apocalypse" out there.

How to: fold money, make your own pizza (ridiculously thorough!), write a business plan. (All via startplane-howto)

Two insane japanese flash games in one day is probably two too many, but dang, avoider is some goofy cute fun.